Minutemen, Brown Shirts: different eras, same problem

HOUSTON My father, an immigrant after the Mexican revolution, told me about a jarring experience he had during a fraternal meeting at a downtown hotel. In those pre-World War II days, he and others realized a group of Brown Shirts, Nazi sympathizers, were responsible for a commotion coming from an upper floor.

I was too young when he told me decades later what it implied. After all, they were not taunted or hurting anyone. Now, after long reflection, I am beginning to understand why it stayed with him so long.

He saw the uniforms and banners and the faces of those who fervently despised him and what they thought he represented. Not businessmen or family men. But foreigners and intruders.

He saw the regalia and martial accoutrements intended to intimidate and strike fear into ordinary, disinterested people who were not seeking to act heroic.

Groups espousing hostile tactics have a way of turning into vigilantes, and the issue can quickly turn into hate.

That's a good reason why keeping a watchful eye on what's happening to the Minute Man Project is so important.

This so-called "neighborhood watch" on the border was started by elements led by Californian Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, a transplant to Arizona. They gained, in 2005, media attention when they organized a monthlong action near the Arizona-Mexico border with 150 to 200 volunteers on the lookout for unauthorized crossings.

Since then, Gilchrist's organization has given him the boot and Gilchrist, after dropping suits he had pending against his original organization, now plans to form a new one.

Simcox has similarly been accused of improprieties by former allies. One controversy concerns millions collected for an Israeli-style border fence proposed to go up in Texas. In April, Simcox stripped Mike Jarbeck, the Florida chapter founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, of his post in a dispute over funding.

More alarming is the number of individuals connected with hate, anti-Semite, pro-mass-deportation groups, and former Minuteman Civil Defense Corps members who have joined the fray and seek to have a say on what happens next, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Clearly, the omnibus "Minuteman" movement is spiraling out of control.

Minuteman Project leaders supposedly tried to distance themselves from white-supremacy organizations. But in March, 10 Southern California members of the Ku Klux Klan showed up at a demonstration to support the Minuteman Project in Ontario, Calif. Organizers had to call off the rally after the Klansmen arrived.

At a Minuteman rally in Washington two years ago, Nazis, wanting to join some lesser-known but extreme supporters, brought to plain sight how these groups coalesce in demonstrations.

It goes beyond that. For instance, five members of a self-styled Alabama militia were denied bond in May after a federal agent testified they planned a machine-gun attack on Mexicans. A sixth man accused of having weapons and explosive components in his home was approved for release.

The reason to watch the implosion of the Minutemen is because their fellow-travelers capitalize on a sheepish public's failure to understand a fundamental mistake.

Pressure groups such as the Minutemen become vigilantes when they cannot distinguish between public policy and people.

You and I may not always agree on details, but we can respect different points of view in a policy debate. It's quite another matter when the concerns are personalized to the point of giving license for others to take matters into their own hands.

The Minuteman movement, starting out as a protest against unauthorized border crossings, became the cover for dangerous individuals to take us into perilous human rights abuses and heinous activities by thugs, creeps and death squads. A wolves-in-sheep's-clothing antic has been pulled over on the public debate.

What's amazing is how little about it seems to have penetrated deep into the nation's psyche. We have seen this before. The Brown Shirts were the warning.

Jose de la Isla is author of "The Rise of Hispanic Political Power." He writes weekly for Hispanic Link News Service. E-mail: joseisla3@yahoo.com.